


With Lindiranae Fell the Dales

by irhinoceri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Codex Entries (Dragon Age), Dalish Elves, Dalish Issues, Exalted Plains (Dragon Age), Gen, Identity Issues, POV Lavellan (Dragon Age), Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26483572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irhinoceri/pseuds/irhinoceri
Summary: Lavellan reflects on the problems with being a Dalish Inquisitor, after seeing the Exalted Plains and being reminded just how vilified her people are by the institution she now serves, and the people she protects.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	With Lindiranae Fell the Dales

“What shall I tell them?”

Josephine’s pen hovered over the parchment.

“Tell them… tell them…” a million different things, none of which Josephine would ever agree to write, passed through her head. “Tell them that Andraste loves them and watches over them as she walks by the Maker’s side.”

Josephine made a little hum of approval and set to work transcribing the ineffable words of the Herald.

Eleva had gotten better at telling people what they wanted to hear. Time spent with Josephine had taught her that skill. She had learned the value of not giving away too much. Of making neutral observations, responding with questions instead of statements, listening, watching, understanding. It had served her well at the Winter Palace. She could only hope that Briala would use the power given to her for good, that contrary to what Sera thought, she would not grow complacent.

_ Have I grown complacent? Has power changed me for the worse? _

Wisdom and discretion could not be bad. Her newfound tact had served her well whenever she stepped aside and let her companions speak, when she ceded the floor to those with more knowledge and experience than her. She would turn to one, say “Vivienne?” when a displaced mage wanted to know why they should join the Inquisition. She let Blackwall give the Wardens at Adamant a moving speech about remembering the nobility of their cause and turning away from the brutal darkness they had fallen into.

That wasn’t complacency.

But she had started to relish the power. To use it to get what she wanted. What she needed.

Gold, agents, resources, allegiance, favors. It had saved Blackwall, let him out of an Orlesian prison cell with the stroke of Josephine’s pen, so that he could continue to serve the Inquisition. He said that they would lose their honor over him, but there was no honor in death, she thought. Only in living and fighting. She promised to send him to the Wardens when this was all over so that he could make truth out of the lie he had been living.

She was living a lie, too, after all.

Watching the faces of those around her harden or pucker in disdain when she denied the faith they clung to in darkness had grown wearisome. So she stopped denying it outright, stopped pointing out that she was an elf, and the Chantry was no friend of hers.

“I am the Herald of Andraste,” she said to herself. She practiced it in the mirror.

And she said it, not in so many words, but in deeds, when she staked the banner of the Inquisition into territory she explored, and directed her advisors to use the full might at their disposal to extend their reach far and wide. Josephine’s contacts, Leliana’s spy network, Cullen’s loyal soldiers. Every time they did her bidding, she said to the world, “I am the Herald of Andraste. Bow to my will. The Maker is with me.”

She did not believe, had never believed in that human religion. She had never once thought that the anchor in her hand was divine. But she was surrounded by believers and those who would use the belief of others to further their own agendas, and somewhere along the way, she had stopped being swept along by the fervor and started to encourage it.

Her inner circle knew her thoughts. She did not lie to them. Cassandra disliked her for it, but she would not mince words. She hoped that the Seeker might come to see that this was the truest form of respect.

“I’ll tell the people what they need to hear to rally behind me, but you will know what I think of the Chantry, truly.”

Leliana understood. She was a true believer, but she also believed in the harsh reality of power and purpose. To make change in the world you had to use the tools that you had. An anchor, a knife, an arrow, a lie.

“I am the Herald of Andraste,” Eleva said to herself, said to the mirror’s reflection on quiet Skyhold nights, or into still pools before her footsteps rippled the water and distorted her face.

Her face, etched with the white marks of Elgar’nan, seemed to answer her back.

_ What could you be, if you did not compromise? _

Would anyone have followed her, a Dalish elf, proudly wearing her vallaslin of vengeance and sun, of fire and burning, if it was not for Leliana and Cassandra and Josephine spreading the lie that Andraste had chosen her?

She did not think so.

She knew the stories about Mahariel, the young Dalish woman who had saved Ferelden from the Blight. But Mahariel was gone, far away somewhere on a personal mission, and would not return for them. She was not at Adamant when the Grey Wardens needed her most. It had been Stroud, it had been Hawke, it had been the Inquisition, it had been Eleva, and Blackwall, liars both, who had spared them the evil they would bring upon the world in their folly.

Mahariel knew she did not owe them her continued sacrifice, her endless service. Wasn’t saving the world once enough?

All she would give Eleva was words of encouragement, distantly etched into a letter.

> _ I wish you luck. This world of the shemlen is a difficult one for our kind, and I can only imagine the pressure of leading the Inquisition, an organization dedicated to the Chantry, while staying true to the Way of the Three Trees. May Mythal protect you in your quest, and Andruil bless your hunt. _

It was hardly enough. Eleva wanted to know so much more. She had so many more questions, so much more guidance was needed.

_ How did you rally them all behind you without having to pretend to be ordained by their god? Chosen by their prophet? Did the Grey Wardens once carry so much respect that that was all you needed? _

_ And have you seen what they have done to our home? Have your travels taken you through the Dales? _

_ You should let the world burn, _ her reflections said to her, speaking as if in the words of Elgar’nan himself, giving her advice when Mahariel would not.  _ Let Corypheaus make himself a new god. The Maker doesn’t deserve your defense, your sacrifice, your service. _

The maker wasn’t real. Andraste had been real enough, a real woman who passed into myth. A woman who may have been considered an elf-friend, in her time, but in whose name genocide had been wrought upon the elves.

_ Look what they did to your homeland in her name. Look at Dirthavaren. _

_ Andraste giveth, the Andrastans taketh away. _

Eleva Lavellan was far from home. And yet, home, at last.

She had been a hunter in her clan. Growing up in the Free Marches, traveling between the city states, camping outside their borders and never staying in one place too long, she’d had few direct dealings with the shemlen. She knew enough of their culture, their history, to get by. But it was never a priority, not until the Keeper had sent her to spy on the conclave.

She knew of the wars between the Dalish and the Chantry, mostly the Orlesian branch. It had been political, territorial, in her mind. The Chantry was a political institution as much as it was religious, located at the intersection of piety and power. It was foreign to her, but she was learning to play the game. And yet, she had not truly understood how out of place she was until she arrived in the Exalted Plains—Dirthavaren as her people still called it.

She was on a mission to investigate the mysterious silence that had fallen upon the area after the warring Orlesian factions had agreed to abide by a temporary truce. It was not meant to be a sightseeing tour or a way to connect with her roots.

The very first thing she had seen upon leaving camp was the marker celebrating the final defeat of her ancestors, the destruction of her people.

> _ Remember the victory of the Dales. _
> 
> _ The elves were murderous and wild, for the Maker's grace did not touch them. The wildest of them was the she-elf Lindiranae, wielder of the great blade Evanura. Defiant to the last, she met Ser Brandis, the Silver Helm, in single combat, and he bested her. _
> 
> _ With Lindiranae fell the Dales. _

It echoed in her head all throughout that long and harrowing campaign against the undead, as they traversed the broken landscape, the ruined majesty of the land she had never known except in her blood, in the stories of her people. All along the Path of Flame were the monuments the victors had built on the ruins of the ancient Elvhen civilization, the monuments to the ruin of the Dalish, now situated among the ruin of the Orlesians. The ruin they had wrought in their civil war.

She cared nothing for Celene or Gaspard.

When she attended the grand ball in Halamshiral she was fresh from her mission to Dirthavaren, with the words of the monuments etched into her memory.

> _ Halamshiral's dark heart was conquered, but one last challenge came from the elves, who would not submit to the Maker. _

She stood by and watched Florianne drive a dagger into the Empress’s back, conquering her dark heart, knowing full well it was coming. She had set Gaspard upon the throne but Briala held the true power, wore the invisible crown, armed with blackmail and the backing of the Inquisition.  _ I give you Orlais, Briala, I give you the Dales. Our homeland is yours, now, bought with the blood of your lover, who was no friend to the elves. _

Would the Herald of Andraste do that?

A better question: what would the followers of Andraste not do? Where would they draw the line to get what they wanted?

> _ The forces of the Exalted March met the elves upon the field; our numbers far exceeded theirs. The Champions, kind and fair, gave the elves a chance for peace, but the elves would not lay down their arms. They slew Lord Demetrius in their charge. Maker take him to His side. _

“The Dread Wolf take him,” she had said, out loud, as she stood before the marker, reading the words of victors who had spoiled their prize. Smoke and death hung thickly in the air even though 700 years had gone since the fall of the Dales.

Dorian, usually so ready with quips, had nothing to say. The elves had once helped Andraste and Maferath defeat the Imperium, so the story went. It was why they had been gifted the Dales in the first place. Her people’s defeat of his people had made her people a nation. So the story goes.

But that was all so long ago, and what had Iron Bull said about Krem once? “He’s not a ‘Vint. He’s just Krem.”

Dorian wasn’t a ‘Vint, to her. He was just Dorian. And she knew that she wasn’t a Dalish, to him, not really. Not after everything. But he knew when to be silent. When to let the ashes of history settle and lie still upon the battlefield.

“I’m sorry, Boss,” said Bull, knowing it was hard, and his gruff compassion might have warmed her heart if the chill unnatural winds swirling across the plains did not keep her in a perpetual state of cold anger.

Solas laughed softly, but it was a sad laugh, a regretful exhalation of breath. He was not Dalish and he confused her, even as he fascinated her, but she thought at last he might be growing to understand her people. Their pain.

Later, after the Winter Palace, she said to him that Briala would be good for their people. “Our people.”

“Our people?” he echoed, with genuine confusion, an absent look on his face. “Oh. You mean the elves. I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves.”

_ My heart,  _ he called her.  _ Vhenan. _

And still he was inscrutable.  _ “What do you feel for me?” _ she wanted to ask.

_ “What do you feel for him?”  _ her reflections asked her back.

She didn’t know how to answer. He was unlike anyone she had met. He was not a Dalish like the clan she had grown up with, he did not think highly of her people, though she could not fully understand why, despite trying to talk it out with him. He did not have the self-loathing and self-hatred of the downtrodden, bitter alienage elves she had met outside the cities. He wasn’t like Sera, who spat on the very idea of being elven or speaking their language. In fact he knew the language and the history of the elves better than anyone… but still held himself above it all, still puzzled at the history which bonded them together, the solidarity borne of suffering, as if he had never suffered for being an elf. He was an apostate mage and, in many ways, an apostate elf.

But there was sadness behind his eyes, too, a quietness in his manner. It must come from traversing the fade, seeing the suffering of others, talking with the spirits of compassion and wisdom.

Eleva wished to be like that. Above it all, yet not without feeling. She tried to be that way, most of the time.

She laid the dead to rest, burning the pits of corpses on the ramparts, sending them away to wherever the souls of the free would go. She gathered the letters of dead Orlesian soldiers to send back to their families. She, a savage she-elf, wielding a bow and arrows of enchanted flame, took their last hopes and dreams and fears into her heart when the Maker had not. Would not. Could not.

_ Andraste loves you all. _

She saw the capacity for anger in Solas, when he killed the mages who had destroyed the spirit of wisdom he called Friend and turned it into a demon.

She had let him, because she knew that rage. They stood on the Plains of her rage. The ridges and the rivers of her rage. The ancient statues of Fen’Harel and Ghilan'nain looked down on them from on high, a silent witness to her silent, cold rage.

The first time Morrigan showed her the Eluvian and stepped through, she had followed, wondering if her reflection would be waiting on the other side.

The Eleva Lavellan who didn’t compromise. Who cursed Andraste and the Maker and told the Chantry to go to hell. The one who used her anchor to tear the rifts open wide and let the demons pour out. The Dread Wolf take them all.

She did not meet herself in the Crossroads. That place was empty, devoid of answers, filled with only more questions.

In her heart still there was a whisper that she should let the world burn, should rip the sky open with the fire in her hand. That’s what the anchor was for, was it not? Opening the veil, accessing the Blackened City, seizing the power of the ancients and wielding it with terrible results?

_ Tell them that with Lindiranae fell the Dales. _

_ But with Lavellan will fall the Veil. _

It was only a dark whisper, though. She was a spirit of compassion. Of wisdom. That’s why Solas cared for her, admired her, was it not?  _ If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours... have I misjudged them? _

The vengeance of Elgar’nan’s fire smoked into damp ash when she saw the suffering that Corypheus and his Venatori wrought upon the world. She would continue to stand in his way, as she had gotten in his way at the Temple of Sacred Ashes and everywhere since. The Dread Wolf take him, for he was no friend of hers.

_ Tell them that Andraste loves them as she walks by the Maker’s side. _

_ Tell them that Andraste blesses an Elf and has raised her up to lead you all. Learn the name Lavellan and respect it well. _

Some would think she had truly converted. Many Dalish across Thedas would think she was one of those elves who believed in their own subservience, even as she led armies. Others would know that to play the game, you must first get on the board.

Where would this game take her, she wondered. It had taken her from the Free Marches to Ferelden to Orlais, it had taken her home to Dirthavaren and far into the bleak landscape of the Hissing Wastes. It had taken her into the Fade itself, into a nightmare and back out again. It had taken her into the arms of Solas, a cipher she wanted to crack, a mystery she needed to solve. Soon it would take her deep into the Arbor Wilds, more Elvhen ruins to face, more history to find.

What would she find there? Would she find, at last, herself? No lies. No faith in human gods.

Would she fall, like Lindiranae, or would she rise to the challenge, like Mahariel?

She looked into the mirror. Elgar’nan looked back.


End file.
